Session 10 - Benefits of open data for public health 

The COVID pandemic has highlighted the urgent need to recognize health data as a global public good and the need for rapid and secure data sharing. Data sharing facilitates and accelerates responses to public health needs, such as in the case of a pandemic. Despite these efforts, several persistent challenges will need to be overcome. Dr. Manuel will discuss the benefits, challenges, and processes of data sharing in public health.

Learning objectives:

1. Review and discuss data sharing and access during the pandemic.
   – From exceptional to woeful
2. Identify the organisational and cultural barriers to data sharing during the pandemic.
   – Discuss what we can all do to support FAIR data
3. Review technical solutions, metadata, and standards to support FAIR data using an open-science approach.
4. Case example: the Open Data Model for Public Health Environmental Science. The OHRI-developed approach to ‘make high-quality sharing data as easy as possible’ for wastewater-based surveillance. The ODM is the de facto international standard used in over 30 countries.

About the speaker:

Dr. Manuel is a Medical Doctor with a Masters in Epidemiology and Royal College specialization in Public Health and Preventive Medicine.

He completed his medical degree at Dalhousie University and studied public health and epidemiology at the University of Toronto. During his residency training he began his research career, which continues to address the same themes that arose during his earlier clinical practice.

His current practice is at the Ottawa Newcomer Clinic Centre, the health care point of entry for refugees arriving in Ottawa. He has published over 150 research papers, including papers in leading journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the British Medical Journal. He has held a Chair in Applied Public Health from the Canadian Institute of Health Research and has led public health research programs.